Messham-Muir, Kit. 'Invention at the Social Scale (Social Configurations): Melting into the Texture...

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First published in 2013 by Sydney University Press ©Individual contributors 2013 ©Sydney University Press 2013 Reproduction and Communication for other purposes Except as permitted under the Act, no part of thi s edition may be reproduced, stored in a ret rieval system, or communicated in any form or by any means without prior writ ten permission. All requests for reproduction or communicat ion should be made to Sydney University Press at t he address below: Sydney University Pr ess Fisher Library F03 University of Sydney NSW 2006 AUSTRALIA Email: [email protected] National Library of Australia C ataloguing- I n-Publicat ion entry Titl e: Ecologies of Invention- edited by Andy Dong, John Conomos, Brad Buckley. ISBN:9781743323571[paperback) 9781743322505[ebook:epub) 9781743322512 (ebook: mobil Notes: Includ es bibliographical references and index. Subjects: Inventi ons - Discoveries in science - Essays. Other Authors/Contributors: Dong, Andy, editor- Conomos, John, editor- Buckley, Brad, editor. Cover and Slipcase Image: Courtesy of Marc Newson Limited Design: Lea Barnett, CampbellBar nett Heading type set: Knarf Art Font 3 Text typ e set: TSTAR Text and Cover stock : Pacesetter LaserP ro Slipcase stock: White Knight with black foil ANDY DONG )OHN CONOfYlOS

Transcript of Messham-Muir, Kit. 'Invention at the Social Scale (Social Configurations): Melting into the Texture...

First published in 2013 by Sydney University Press

©Individual contributors 2013

©Sydney University Press 2013

Reproduction and Communication for other purposes

Except as permitted under the Act, no part of this edition may be reproduced, stored in a retrieva l system, or communicated in any form or by any means without prior writ ten permission. All requests for reproduction or communicat ion should be made to Sydney University Press at t he address below:

Sydney University Press Fisher Library F03 University of Sydney NSW 2006 AUSTRALIA Email: [email protected]

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-In-Publication entry

Title: Ecologies of Invention- edited by Andy Dong, John Conomos, Brad Buckley.

ISBN:9781743323571[paperback) 9781743322505[ebook:epub) 9781743322512 (ebook: mobil

Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Subjects: Inventions - Discoveries in science - Essays.

Other Authors/Contributors: Dong, Andy, editor­Conomos, John, editor- Buckley, Brad, editor.

DeweyNumbe~A824 .008035

Cover and Slipcase Image: Courtesy of Marc Newson Limited Design: Lea Barnett, CampbellBarnett

Heading type set: Knarf Art Font 3 Text type set: TSTAR Text and Cover stock: Pacesetter LaserPro Slipcase stock: White Knight with black foil

ANDY DONG )OHN CONOfYlOS ~RAD ~U[KL::Y

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CDNT NTS

FOR::WORD 11

Marc Newson

INTRODUCTION 1 3

Andy Dong I John Conomos I Brad Buckley

1 INU::NTION AT TH:: ~ LOCAL SCAL:: [CAPACITI::Sl 2l

Discourses of Intervention: A Language of Invention

Andy Dong 28

Inventing Cultural Machines

Petra Gemeinboeck I Rob Saunders 37

z II'!U::NTION AT TH:: y LOCAL SCAL:: [S::NSIESILITI::Sl Yl

The 'Character' and the 'Algorithm': An Essay on Technology and Art

Dan Lovallo 49

Art and Robotics- A Brief Account of Eleven Years of Cross-Disciplinary Invention

Mari Velonaki I David Rye 55

INU::NTION AT TH:: SOCIAL SCAL:: [SOCIAL CONFIGURATIONS) 69

Melting into the Texture of Everyday Life

Klt Messham-Muir 70

On Building a Perceptual Appa ratus-Experiments in Proximity

John Tonkin 78

INU::NTION AT TH:: SOCIAL SCAL:: 5 [ClJL TlJRAL AND SOCIO-SPATIAL CONFIGURATION) 91

The Artist-run Initiative: An Agent That Blurs the Studio, Laboratory and Exhibit ion Space, Creating a Site for Inventiveness

Brad Buckley I John Conomos 92

ICAN: Reinventing the Autonomy of the Artist-run Initiative

Alex Gawronski 99

INU::NTION AT TH:: CITY SCAL:: [ARCHIT::CTlJRAL AND SPATIAL CONFIGURATIONS) 11 3

Fit to Burst: Bodies, Organs and Complex Corporealities

Chris L. Smith 114

Entangled: Complex Bodies and Sensate Machines

Dagmar Reinhardt I Lian Loke 125

INU::NTION AT TH:: N::TWORK SCAL:: [N::TWORK CONFIGURATIONS) 13l

Inventions Are Networks: Fostering the Liminal Play of Ideas

Sean Lowry 138

Expanding Sonic Space: An Antipodean Approach to Te lematic Music

Ivan Zavada 147

l INU::NTIONS AND R::COIYIESINANT PO::TRY 159

Bill Seaman I Otto E. Rossler 160

AESOLJT TH:: CONTRIESLJ TORS 1 6 l

LIST OF FIGLJR::S 1 8 3

IND::X 185

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rYl LTING INTO TH T >< TUR OF U RYDAY LIF

KIT MESSHAM-MUIR In only the most recent years, communications technologies have evolved . rapidly and now are at the centre of social life in Western culture. Te.chnologles now respond to us in the most intuitive ways and have become omnipresent to the extent that they are becoming invisible. This ubiquitous networked culture is in turn changing our attitudes to information and knowledge, and, . importantly, our expectations of our participation within them. Knowledge 1s. now understood less as a static entity to be transmitted and more as an act1ve relational process, taking place within social connections. This chapter looks at the ways in which recent and rapid evolutions in technology profoundly impact attitudes and expectations at a social level and, in turn, affect t he ways in which knowledge is sorted and synthesised i~ this emergi~g socio­technolog ical paradigm. In what ways might these sh1fts be changmg the. relationship between audiences and contemporary art? Th1s chapter beg1ns to address this question by considering the responsive works of artist John Tonkin. Based in Sydney, Tonkin's works respond to the physical presence of their audience and, in the case of his public work Nervous System, acts as a catalyst fo r social connectivity. I will suggest here that our network~d.cultu re is actually becoming less about technology and more about synthes1s1ng

knowledge at the social scal e.

CDNN::CTIUITY Just a little over a decade ago, the internet was optional in the same way mobile phones were at the t ime: we 'opted-in' t o using it. In 2006-07, .only 67% of Australian homes had internet access, 1 and l!7% of those connections were via dial-up .z That is, almost half the household internet usage in Austra lia involved making a conscious decision to dial- in through a modem from a computer. The percentage of internet access through mobile ~hones was in single figures3 and largely accessed through slow and expe~s1ve pa~-per­download GPRS connections, displaying stripped-down mob1le webs1tes on postage-stamp screens. The internet was thus a discrete entity, part of the optional functionality of a computer. Adam Greenfield wrote in 2006:

A mobile phone is something that can be switched off or left at home. A computer is something that can be shut down, unplugged, walked away from. But the technology we're discussing here-ambient, ubiquitous, capable of insinuating itself into all the apertures everyday life affords it­will form our environment in a way neither of those technologies can. There should be little doubt that its advent will profoundly shape both the world

and our experience of it in the years ahead.4

By 2011, Greenfield's prediction was reality: 'Computing has leapt off the

desktop and insinuated itself in everyday life.'5

In 2011, 79% of Australia n households had internet access,6 with 19.5 million users I88.B% of the popu lationl.7 Likewise in the United States: 78% of American accessed the internet in 2011; in fact. 9l!% of those between the ages 18-29, and 87% between the ages 30- l!9.8 But the real revolution has been in how we now access the internet. Dial-up had become dinosaur technology by 2011, and l!l!% of all internet connections in Australia were from mobile and wireless devices. The internet is becoming less a 'computer' technology. Ownership of desktop computers is steadily declining in America 168% in 2006; 55% in 2011L while smartphone ownership cont inues to rise IL!6% in 20121.9 As Don Delillo's novel Cosmopolis prophetically suggested in 2003, 'Computers will die. They're dying in their present form. They're just about dead as distinct units. A box, a screen, a keyboard. They're melting into the t exture of everyday life. This is t rue or not? ... Even t he word computer sounds backward and dumb.'10 The computer mutated into the smartphone and the t ablet; its hard disk became the cloud and its mouse became the touchscreen. 4G mobile internet penetrates c ity streets, and a cafe without wi-fi might as well not have coffee. Th e internet is no longer something we log-in to; it has melte d in to the world.

Until recently, the 'information architectures'11 of the internet persisted in a publishing and broadcasting model, in the 'Web 1.0' mode as we now conceive of it. In exactly the same timeframe as mobile internet has permeated social spaces, we have seen the synergetic development of the socia l web, Web 2.0, the internet of social networks, of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, or blogging, posting and responding. According to Kathryn Zickuhr and Aaron Smith, once a person has a mobile device, their internet activity tends to increase, not just via mobile connectivity but overall.12 1n America, 67% of online adults in America use social networking;13 in Australia, it is 58.7%1~ In fact. in 2013 49.9% of the entire Australian population has a Facebook account 111.5 million!; there are 11 million YouTube accounts, and around 3 million each of Blogspot and Word Press blogging accounts, 2.7 million Linked in accou nts, 2.6 million on Tumblr and 2.1 million on Twitter. 15This conftuence of mobi le internet t echnologies and Web 2.0 has turned t he internet int o a vast array of social media.

::><P::CTATIDNS AND ATTITUD::S It would be a mistake to see this development of social media as simply a new . communications technology. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis identify the change~ brought about by the 'social web' as actual 'changing knowledge ecologies.'15

They say, 'These are ideal conditions for the development of ever more finely grained areas of knowledge, cultural perspectives and localised applications of knowledge. So significant is this change, that knowledge itself may change.'17

Accord ingly, particular sets of expectat ions and attitudes have emerged, which have been identified in recent research.

One expectation is that information comes easy: 76% of the teachers surveyed by the Pew Research Center in the United States 'strongly agree' that internet searching has conditioned students to expect to find informat ion qu ickly and easily.18 Information is certainly abundant: at the time of writ ing, a Go ogle search on t he phrase 'abundance of info rmation' returns 'About 59,600,000 resu lts 10.27 seconds!'. Almost 60 million potential sources, retrieved in tess than a th ird of a second: if I clicked on every result f or only 12 seconds, it would st ill take me from now until I retire 123 years from nowl t o get t hrough them, as long as I didn't leave my computer to sleep, eat and live. Of course, Google's algorithms sort this abundance of information on 'abundance of informat ion' for me !interestingly, Wikipedia's page on 'information over load' comes up number one]. In the face of this information overload, an important 'meta-skill', as George Siemens calls it, is 'the rapid evaluation of knowledge.'19 Skim read ing, once a specia list skill of overworked academics, is now a common practice, as is the capac ity t o quickly digest information and evaluate its potential worth.

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The important shift here is from acquiring knowledge to managing it. Thus, the 'just- in-case' model of knowledge, which has hitherto been an axiom of all educat ion, is beginning to seem less appropriate. For example, I went through the Welsh secondary education system in the 1980s. One of the routine tortures that was a supposedly vital pillar of learning was the multiplication table, or the 'times tab les' as we called it. Even as rote learning was becoming seen at the time as quest ionab le, even meaningless, learning the multiplication table was generally accepted as one exception in which rote learning was still valuable. In Mr Jones' mathematics class we rec ited that 'one-two-are-two, two-twos-are-four, three-twos-are-six' and so on, in a kind of perverse abridged iambic pentameter. As an inordinately cynical and admittedly lazy twelve-year-old, I could not see the point: I had a calculator if I needed to know what seven- sixes were, so the effort and time learning the 'times tables' mantra seemed like a waste. But, teachers would berate, what if I didn't have a ca lculator handy? I should know this 'just in case'. As it happens, in the 30 years since, I've never once been in a situation where I needed to work-out a multiplication and either didn't have a calculator or wasn't with someone who had learned the multiplica tion table. In those situations, the information was retrieved 'just in time', not learned 'just in case'.

When information on just about any topic is available within 0.2 seconds, we are surely shifting from a 'just in case' model of knowledge to 'just in time'. Mobile devices enab le this- iPhones, Androids, iPads and other smartphones and tablets. 62% of the entire adult population in the US are likely to have used the mobile internet for 'just in t ime' information in the last 30 days. That is, '86% of smartphone owners used their phone in the past month to make real-time queries to help them meet friends, solve problems, or settle arguments.' In fact, 27% used their smartphone to get information to settle an argument.2° Of course, just-in-time information cannot substitute for deepe r and slowly acquired knowledge, such as learning to read music or write computer code, or the manual skills of flying an airplane or playing a guitar. As John D. Cook puts it, 'The difference between just- in-case and just-in-time is like the difference between training and t rying. You can't run a marathon by trying hard. The first person who tried that died. You have to train for it. You can't just say that you'll run 26 miles when you need to and do nothing until then.'21

Concurrent with the rise of this just-in-time knowledge- management approach to information is a shift in attitudes towards knowledge and the nature of our participation within it. Social media is turning knowledge into a social process. Knowledge is understood as less a static thing, possessed by the knowing and given to the unknowing; rather, knowledge is a creative and relational process in which information, abundant and constantly updated and shifting, is synthesised through sharing between multiple participants. In 2009, Jianwei Zhang said that Web 2.0 technologies have made it possible for 'participatory social networking and knowledge sharing, with promise for supporting knowledge creation.'22 Thus, socia l networks create knowledge, not simply transmit it. The old transmission model of mediat ed knowledge, which has existed since the invention of the Gutenberg printing press in the mid-fifteenth century, in which authors create and readers rece ive, is currently giving way to an emerging participatory model, in which the roles of creator and consumer are interchangeable and audiences and authors are the same people. As Susan Cairns says, 'The core focus of Web 2.0 is participation, rather than publication.'23 Participation takes many forms. It can mean simply posting a textual status update or tweet. And it can mean posting substantial original cont ent, like blogs, photographs and videos: '-16% of adult internet users in t he United States post original photos or videos online that they have created themselves.24

In the grey area between creators and consumers, many social media users are also 'curators': '-11% of American internet users repast photos or videos found online.25

We're not just sharing pictures of cats, we're selecting and sharing information and knowledge and, importantly, editorialising on it. The web versions of major newspapers, such as The Times, The New York Times and The Sydney Morning Herald, carry 'share' buttons that allow us to repast to social media sites with our own comments . Fifteen per cent of Americans now get most news from personal connections on social media sites, and this 'rises to nearly a quarter among 18-to-25-year-olds.'26 Content aggregators, such as Goog/e News and The Huffington Post, glean

news stories from mult ip le sou rces and, in re-presenting them toget her, fragment the au thority of the trad itio nal mainst ream newspapers, which are in rapid decline.27

For the you nger generat ions that dominate social media, 28 knowledge sharing is perhaps less abo ut s imple redistribu t ion and more about a co-creative, crowd-sou rcing, creative commons approach to knowledge. Cairns notes a 'swing away from dissemination and toward mutualization'.29 This swing is perhaps regist ered more acut ely in the field of education. 30 According to Susan D. Blum, one impact is a signifi ca nt rise in plag iarism wh ich, she argues, is not simply because the internet facilitates the easy cut-and-paste of text; rather, 'It has changed how [students] t hink of texts.'31 Similarly, Trip Gabriel says, 'The Internet may also be redefining how students-who came of age with music file-shar ing, Wi kipedia and Web- linking-underst and t he concept of authorship and t he singula rity of any text or image.'32 Maybe the emergi ng generat ions will eventually reject present understandings of intellectual property. in the earliest period of the pr inting press, know n as t he ' incunabula' [1452- 15011, convent ions of publishing were still in formation-tables of contents, page numbering, chapt er headings and copyright si mply did not exist.33 1t took 250 years for ideas of authorship and intellectual property to consolidate into copyright laws for the world of the printing press.34 ln 2013, we are moving rap idly th rough a 'digita l incunabula',35 and we cannot know at t his point where these ideas will settle. Nevertheless, what we are registering is changing ideas of knowledge, moving away fro m knowledge as a thing that is held and owned to a connective relat ional process.

CDNN::CTI UI SJYl George Siemens was one of t he ea rliest educat ion theorists to recognise t he potentia l ways in which the social capacities of internet technologies cou ld radically change app roaches to knowledge, creating the term 'connectivism'.36 Bruce Neubauer, Richard Hug, Keith Hamon and Shelley Stewart say, 'Connectivism is an emerging explanat ion or theory of learning regarding the significance of networks [nodes and connect ions! as related both to individual learn ing and the collective generat ion of knowledge.'37 Terry Anderson says, 'connectivist theorists stress t he value of peer-to-peer interaction in investigating and developing mu lt iple perspectives.'38 In forming the theory, Siemens idenitifies three epistemologica l traditions in learning:

Objectivism [s imilar to behaviorism] states that reality is external and is objective, and knowledge is gained t hrough experiences. Pragmatism [similar to cognitivisml states that reality is interpreted, and knowledge is negotiat ed through experience and thinking. lnterpret iv ism [similar to constructivism] states that reality is interna l, and knowledge is construct ed.39

Sieme ns argues that common to these models of th inking about knowledge is t he tenet that learning occurs inside a person.40 Yet, he argues, knowledge occurs between people; it is 'stored' and actively constitu ted with in social connectionsY And, in a networked world, 'The capacity to fo rm connections between sources of info rmation, and t hereby create useful info rmation patterns, is requi red to learn in our knowledge economy.'42

Connectivism, Siemens argues, is the theory that knowledge is formed when information flows between th e nodes of social and technological networks, which are 'nebulous environ ments of shifting core elements'. Thus, knowledge is continually changing: 'While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decis ion.' The ability to sort and evaluat e information is therefore a core skill. 43 Siemens' approach has been criticised, largely for his over-c laiming that it represents a whole new lea rning theory.44 Written in 2005, there is no mention of social media in Siemens' 'Connectivism: A Learning Theory tor the Digital Age', but other theor ists have since considered more specifically how social media can 'transform scholarship into socia l scholarship'.45 In this new paradigm of knowledge, then, education is no longer defined as the single-direction t ransmission and recept ion of knowledge; instead, it becomes about creating the conditions, spaces and opportunities t or knowledge t o be created, t o collide and to synthesise. The important thing is that the key to connectivism is not technology, but people and the connections between them, which are hyper­en abled by technolo gy.

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Technologies such as The Cube at Oueensland University of Technology lOUT] assume a techno logically enabled socially networked audience. The Cube, activated in 2013, is essentially three large panoram ic screens wrapped around the four sides of an L-shaped structure at the OUT's Science and Engineering Centre in Brisbane. It is a public ly accessible space, which is also used for teaching and research. The screens are responsive to multiple touch, which allows many users to point move, tap to open, pinch and zoom, and other movements which seem natural for a contemporary audience. The Cube has a number of different applications, such as a large interactive animated underwater Virtual Reef, the Physics Playroom in which certain properties such as gravity can be varied and the Flood Wall, based around the 2011 ftood that inundated large areas of Brisbane's waterfront. It combines the earth science surrounding the ftood with its social dimension as an experience shared by the people of Brisbane. The public can upload their photographs, videos and written pieces to the wall, place them on a timeline and a map, and see similar posts left by others. The scale of the wall opens up the virtual space into the physical and social space of The Cube- people can share stories, point to their homes, show others their photographs­so the socia l networking takes place on both the virtual and real sides of the screen.

In 2011, Sydney-based artist John Tonk in completed a responsive light and sound installation called Nervous System in a public park for the Southport Broadwater Parklands Redevelopment in the Gold Coast, Oueensland. The work consists of 20 steel poles lit with a vertical strip of LEOs that emit brightly coloured moving shapes and electronic blips. Both the sound and lights of each pole respond to light sound, temperature and motion in their immediate environment as well as the movement and proximity of people present. Each pole responds to its immediate proximity and is also connected to the other poles. Each function as a node in the networked whole, hence Tonkin's title Nervous System. Like an organic nervous system, the work senses its environment and responds. And when the social dimension is added, the work becomes reftexive.

Nervous System is removed from the immediate contextual frame of art and all that implies. Sure, aficionados of contemporary art familiar with Tonkin's work are likely to see Nervous System in the context of Tonkin's practice, his stated concerns with phenomenology, embodiment and thinking; but what does the work mean to a jogger, a dog walker or a group of teenagers on BMXs who don't bring this frame to the work? Watch people respond to the work, and vice versa, in the evening twilight: the ad- hoc investigations and experimentation that Nervous System provokes-the way the work 'plays' its audience and, in turn, their responses to each other-activate this public space as a connected social space. When its audience reaches a critical mass, Nervous System becomes analogous to a digital social network.

Like Nervous System, much of Tonkin's work responds directly to its audience. Unlike Nervous System, much of his work looks more like video art: ftat screen monitors mounted on walls in a darkened gallery space. The video images on Tonkin's screens are nearly abstracted incidental moments that move just enough not to be considered as still images. Their soundtracks barely rumble and whisper. There is perhaps just enough of a visual hook to draw you closer, and it is at that moment that we realise these videos are responding to our physical movements. From the screen of Tonkin's Selective Attention, 2011, we hear rain pouring. The image is a green and white blur, moving minutely, until we approach it. As we close in on the screen, the narrow depth of field of the image pulls in and the focus sharpens to reveal heavy rain seen through a window. When we approach another work, meta-cognition, our movements fast­forward images that rush through a forest, a blurred forward view f rom a moving car, and the same images pictured on other screens. We see another figure watching these images, just like us, in a gallery space and sometimes in a surrealistic curved room. Moving back and forth in front of t he work, we scrub at high speed through th is montage.

Tonkin's interactive videos actually resist the designation of eith •· . , or 'video': er mteract1ve

I've been really interested in exploring somewhere between tho t . th· th r l"k · . se wo th1ngs

sohme !ng a ~ mo~e 1 ,~a Video work but IS still interactive. I coined the ' p rase responsive v1deo. 6

True enough, ~!s works. do, almost nothing without the engagement of their aud1ence, yet mteract1ve no longer seems like the right term-not only f T k

. , or . on m s.work, b~t a l~o .for t.he kind of engagement of today's audience. Although mteract1ve mult1med1a IS s.tlll relatively new, the term itself already carries certain baggahge. l.t summ

1ons to m1nd the in fo rmation retrieval of a touch-screen directory

1n as opp1ng mal or a1rport, or the didacticism of educational museum tech nolo such as the interactive timeline of the life of Winston Churchill at the Churchill gy, Museum, London: projected onto a large tabletop, museum visitors touch and manipulate the screen to open years, months and dates in Churchill's life, to open files and expand images and documents. 'Interactive' implies an invitation to a particular audience to interact for a particular purpose. Interactive interfaces have often been passive and manual: a two-dimensional touch screen awaiting the hand of the user. The narrative route through many interactives can be plotted on a ftow chart as a series of questions, providing one set of options that lead to another set, and so on.

Tonkin's responsive videos, on the other hand, do something different. The works set traps that lay dormant until their audience, often unknowingly, trigger a response by their physical proximity to the works. When we become aware of the connection between our own bodily movements and the movement on screen, we become consciously aware of the feedback loop that is created by our movements and the effects of the video. Even if we are familiar with Tonkin's other responsive works, we approach a new work not knowing how the work will respond to our presence. For some works, our varying proximity will cause the image to blur or sharpen; others will cut between different 'scenes'; others will scrub back and forth at different speeds. Each works responds differently, and with certain works each encounter with the same work will create a different response. There is no predictable ftow chart of responses. Although it becomes quickly apparent that the works are responding to the movement of our bodies, it is not obvious how. Tonkin's audiences in the gallery space often attempt to provoke different responses by waving arms, lifting legs, walking towards the works and backing away. At this point, audiences 'play' Tonkin's work with their trial-and-error movements in space: if I move closer to the screen, the bottle on the escalator slows down. Am 1 causing t hat? What's happens when I step backward or move my arms? The audience's embodied performance in proximity to the work is necessary for the work to perform in response. Tonkin says that his audience plays his works 'like a musical instrument'Y Perhaps the musical instrument closest to Tonkin's work is the theremin, the kinetic electronic instrument played only by the gestures of a musician. When a musician plays a theremin, the instrument demands that they perform certain movements to create certain sounds and, in effect, t he instrument 'plays' the musician. Tonkin's responsive videos likewise 'play' their audience. The ro les of both the work and its audience shift into a more active performative mode.

In this way, Tonkin's responsive works reconceive interactive multimedia from its usual asymmetrical ftow of information, from media to receiver, to a more collaborative synthesis. As Tonkin says, 'I've always been interested in this idea of blurring the boundary of who's making the art.'~8 The process becomes less about information retrieval and more a creative and improvisational process. Or, to put it another way, unlike the usual approach of interactive multimedia, in Tonkin's work information is not gained by the audience, but is instead generated in a process of co- creation.

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Tonkin's Nervous System is different in many respects from The Cube at OUT. It is much more abstract and much less didactic. However, similar to The Cube, Nervous System generates a technologically activated social space that takes place between those engaging with the technology. Visitors to The Cube and the public that engage with Nervous System are practically the same people­the audience, in the broader sense, is certainly exactly the sam e. It's the same audience settling arguments using their iPhones, sharing news stories on Facebook, sorting information. curating t heir lives, posting videos and photographs. Tonkin's responsive works intuit ively address certain inclinations in the audience to engage technology in a participatory and social way. Like social media, the work is activated within social connections as much as it activates. What happens in Nervous System, and in so many other emerging communication technologies, happens person-to-person as much as it does between people and technology. All of Tonkin's responsive works, to some extent, push us back out of technology and into the social space. That may be where our future with technology lies-not within virtual reality, but with the

virtual in reality.

'Use of Information Technology 1301.0, Year Book Australia, 2012', Australian Bureau of Statistics. Accessed 30 April2013, www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs~.nst/Lookup/by%20 Subject/130l.0-2012-Main%20Features-Use%20ot%20intormation%20technotogy-174.

2 Summary, B153.0, Internet Activity, Australia, June 2006', Australian Bureau of Statistics. Accessed 30 Apri12013, www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs~.nsf/aUprimarymainfeatu res/ 07D9E51D3E439E3FCA2572830017E4C5?opendocument.

3 'Use of Information'.

4 Adam Greenfield, Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing (Berkeley: New Riders, 2006). 6.

5 Greenfield, Everyware, 9.

6 'Use of Information'.

7 'Oceana and South Pacific', Internet World Stats, 2011. Accessed 6 May 2013, internetworldstats.com/pacific.htm#au .

8 Kathryn Zickuhr and Aaron Smith, 'Digital Differences: While Increased Internet Adoption and the Rise of Mobile Connectivity Have Reduced Many Gaps in Technology Access over the Past Decade, tor Some Groups Digital Disparities Still Remain' !Pew Research Center's Internet & American Lite Project: Washington DC, 20121. 5. Accessed 30 Aprii2D13, pewinternet.org/ Reports /2012/ Dig ita!-d iff ere nces.aspx.

9 Zickuhr and Smith, 'Digital Differences', 14.

1D Oon OeLillo, Cosmopolis (New York: Scribner, 20D3l. 46.

11 Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, 'The Rote of the Internet in Changing Knowledge Ecologies', Canadian Journal of Media Studies, 7(2010]: 1- 23.

12 Zickuhr and Smith, 'Digital Differences', 14.

13 Maeve Duggan and Joanna Brenner, The Demographics of Social Media Users-2012. (Pew Research Center's Internet & American Lite Project: Washington DC, 20131. Accessed 6 May 2013, pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Sociat-media-users.aspx.

14 David Cowling. 'Social Media Statistics Australia-April 2013', Social Media News. Accessed 6 May 2D13, www.sociatmedianews.com.au/sociat-media-statistics-australia-april-2013/; 'Oceana and South Pacific.'

15 David Cowling, 'Social Media Statistics Australia-Apri12013.'

16 Cope and Kalantzis, 'The Role of the Internet'.

17 Cope and Kalantzis, 'The Rote of the Internet', 5.

18 Kristen Purcell, Lee Rainie, Alan Heaps, Judy Buchanan, Linda Friedrich, Amanda Jacklin, Clara Chen, and Kathryn Zickuhr. 'How Teens Do Research in the Digital World: A Survey of Advanced Placement and National Writing Project Teachers Finds that Teens' Research Habits Are Changing in the Digital Age' (Washington DC: Pew Research Center's Internet & American Lite Project, 20121. 3. Accessed 30 April2013, pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Student-Research.

19 George Siemens, 'Connectivism: A Learning Theory tor the Digital Age', International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2111. 12005]: 5.

20 Lee .Rainie, Joanna Brenner and Kristen Purcelll2012]. Photos and Videos as Soctal ~urrency Online !Washington DC: Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, 20121, 4. Accessed 1 May 2013, pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/0nline­Pictures.aspx .

21 John ~oak, March 16, 2010, 'Emacs', The Endeavour, Accessed 30 April, 2013. www.Johndcook.com/btog/page/79.

22 Jianwei Zhang, 'Toward a Creative Social Web tor Learners and Teachers'. Educational Researcher, 38 (20091, 276.

23 Susan Cairn~, 'Mutualizing Museum Knowledge: Folksonomies and the Changing Shape of Expert1se . Curator: The Museum Journal, 56(20131:108.

24 Rainie, Brenner and Purcell, 'Photos and Videos'.

25 Rainie, Brenner and Purcell, 'Photos and Videos', 2.

26 Pew.Research Center, Internet S American Life Project (Washington oc, 20131. pewlnternet.org/Reports/2013.

27 Matthew Knott, 'Circulation Figures: The Paper Is Dead, Long Live the ·Masthead·· c "k 15 February 2013. A.ccessed 6 May 2013, www.crikey.com.au/2013/02/15/circulati;-ey. flgures-the-paper-ls-~ead-long-live-the-masthead/; The Pew Research center, The State of the New~ Medta 2012: An Annual Report on American Journalism. (The Pew Research Centres Project for Excellence in Journalism: 20121. Accessed 6 May 2013 stateotthemedia.org. '

28 Ougg~n and Br~nner, The Demographics of Social Media, 3; Lenhart, 'Teens & Online Video: Shootmg, ~hanng, Streammg and Chatt ing-Social Media Using Teens Are the Most Enthu~1ast1c Users of Many Online Video Capabilities', (Washington OC: Pew Research Centers Internet & American Life Project. 2012). Accessed 6 May 2013, pewinternet.org/ Reports/2012/Teens-and-ontine-video.aspx.

29 Cairns, 'Mutualizing Museum Knowledge', 107.

30 Siemens, 'Con~ectivi~m'; Cope and Kalantzis, 'The Role of the Internet'; Zhang, 'Toward a Creat1ve Soc1at Web; Chris.tine Greenhaw, Beth Robelia and Joan Hughes, 'Research on Learnmg and Teach1ng w1th Web 2.0: Bridging Conversations', Education Researcher, ~812009); Bruce J. Neubauer, Richard W. Hug, Keith W. Hamon and Shelley K. stewart, Usmg ~er;onal Learmng Networks to Leverage Communities of Practice in Public Affairs Educat1on, Journal of Public Affairs Education, 112011): 9-25.

31 Susan Blu~, 2~09, original emphasis. My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture !New York: Cornell Un1vers1ty Press, 20061, 5.

32 Trip Gabriel, 'Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age', The New York Times. 1 August 2010. Accessed 6 May 2013 www.nytimes.com/2010/0B/02/education/02cheat html?_r· l. ·

33 Cope and Kalantzis, 'The Role of the Internet'. 4.

34 Jean_-Ctaude Guedon, In Oldenburg's Long Shadow: Librarians, Research Scientists, Publrshers and the Control of Scientific Publishing.lWashington DC: Association of Research Libraries, 20011. 11.

35 Cope and Kalantzis, 'The Role of the Internet', 4.

36 Siemens, 'Connectivism'.

37 Neubauer, Hug, Hamon & Stewart, 9.

38 Terry Anderson, The Theory and Practice of Online Learning (Edmonton: AU Press. 20081, 57.

39 Siemens, 'Connectivism', 4.

40 Siemens. 'Connectivism', 5.

41 Siemens, 'Connectivism', 3.

42 Siemens, 'Connectivism', 6.

43 Siemens. 'Connectivism', 7.

44 Anderson, The Theory and Practice of Online Learning, 18.

45 Greenhaw, Robelia and Hughes, 'Research on Learning and Teaching', 1.

46 John Tonkin, artist interview, 21 April2013.

47 Tonkin, 2013.

48 Tonkin, 2013.

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Dr Petra Gemeinboeck is a Senior Lecturer at t he Co llege of Fine Arts, the University of New South Wales . She is also an adjunct Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. Gemeinboeck practice crosses the fields of architecture, interactive insta llation, mobile media, robotics, and visual culture. In her current research, Geme inboeck collaborates with Dr Rob Saunders to develop robotic interventions as an investigative lens into the co-evolution of humans and machines by deploying autonomous robots, embedded into the architectural fab ric of a gallery.

RO~ SAUND::RS

Dr Rob Saunders is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. His primary research interest is the deve lopment of computational models of creativity. The development of computational models of creative processes provides opportunities for deve loping a better understanding of human creativity, producing tools that support human creativity and possibly creating autonomous systems capable of creative activity. His approach to developing computational models of creativity is to develop curious agents and to use these agents to simulate creative systems.

fYlARI U::LONAkl

Associate Professor Mari Velonaki is t he director of the Creative Robotics Lab at the National Institute for Experimental Arts, the University of New South Wales. Velonaki is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies at the University of Sydney. She has worked as an artist and researcher in the field of elect ronic art. since 1995. Her work creates intellectual ly and emotionally engaging human-machine interfaces incorporating movement, speech, touch, breath, electrostatic charge, artific ia l vision, light, text and robotics. In 2009 she was awarded an Aust ralian Research Council Oueen Elizabeth II Fellowship [2009- 2013) for the creation of a new robot in order to develop an understanding of the physicality that is possible and acceptable between a human and a robot.

DRUID RY::

Associate Professor David Rye is a co-founder of the Australian Centre for Field Robotics, which was established in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering at the University of Sydney in 1999. He holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Sydney. He has conducted extensive research in fields related to automat ion and control of machines, including applied nonlinear control, co ntainer­handling cranes, excavat ion, and autonomous vehic les. Since 2003 he has worked in the field of social robotics, designing and implementing autonomous robots that can interact with people in social spaces. Rye is recognised as a pioneer in the introduction and development of university t eaching in mechatronics, having instituted the first Australian BE in mechatronics in 1990.

DAN LOUALLO Prof essor Dan Lovallo is at the University of Sydney Business School and is a Senio r Resea rch Fellow at the Inst itute for Innovat ion Management and Organizat ion at t he University of Ca liforni a, Berkeley. His research is concerned with psychological aspects of strategic decis ions and has appeared in the American Economic Review, Management Science and the Harvard Business Review. He received his PhD f rom the Haas School of Business at the University of Californ ia, Berkeley. He is a member of the Editorial Board fo r the Strategic Management Journal and t he McKinsey Finance. Dan is currently leading an ARC discovery project t it led 'Behavioural Strat egies for Selecting Innovation Project s'.

) OHN TONkiN

John Tonkin is a Lecturer in t he Digital Cultures program in the Faculty of Art s and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. He is also an artist and in teractive designer and programmer. He exhibits artworks bot h nationally and internationally. in 1999-2000 he received a f ellowship from the New Media Arts Board of t he Australia Council for the Arts. Tonkin is current ly working on a number of projects that use real-time 3D an imation, visualisation and data-mapping t echnologies. These include 'St range Weather', a visualisation too l for making sense of life, and 'time and mot ion study'. Tonkin has worked as an educator in a number of capacities, including lecturing in multimedia at a number of Sydney institutions inc luding TAFE, Metro Screen, UTS and the Australian Film Te levision and Rad io Schoo l.

kiT fYl::SSH AfYl - fYlUIR

Dr Kit Messham-Muir is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Arts at the University of Newcast le, where he is the Prog ram Convenor of t he Bachelor of Fine Art. He graduated from Sydney College of the Art s, the University of Sydney, wit h a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 199LJ and in 2000 was awarded a PhD in Art History and Theory from the University of New Sou th Wales. He was a full-t ime academic in t he Museum Studies unit at the University of Sydney in 2002-2005, and continued to t each at the Universi ty as sessional staff in 2005-2007. He has won severa l awards for h is teaching, publishes frequently and works internationally on the StudioCrasher video project. Messham­Muir's research examines the ways in which interpretive practices in galleries and museums impact upon visitors' expe rien ces, pa rti cularly by evoking memory and emotion. He is currently working on a book that explores the role of imagin g technology in contemporary warfare through the video installation work of Shaun Gladwell, one of Australia's Of ficial War Artist.

AL::>< GAWRONSki

Or Alex Gawronski is an art ist writer and Lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts, t he University of Sydney, f rom wh ich he also holds a PhD. Much of Gawronski's resea rch is concerned with investigating the gallery as a type of self- generating narrative space in wh ich discourses of represent ation and power collide. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and t he Art Gallery of New Sout h Wales. Gawronski is also a co-found ing director of the Institu te of Contemporary Art Newtown [ICAN!.

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